Orit Bashkin

Following Operation Protective Edge, many cities around the world have witnessed demonstrations sympathizing with the people of Gaza. Tel Aviv had a few as well. Haggai Matar, a leftist activist, participated in one on July 12:
The right-wingers announced in advance that they would be coming to physically assault us in the protest. However, police paid no heed to the warnings, nor to the threats made on the scene when the protest began, nor to our requests ...

During the past week Americans, Europeans, and Middle Easterners were reminded of Iraq. A stream of photos, articles, essays, and analyses has tried to make sense of the situation in Iraq during the last decade. One group, however, does not need to be reminded of the gravity of the situation—the many Iraqis, men and women alike, whose lives have been irreversibly changed during the last decades.
In this piece, I want to reflect on the kinds of themes historians have been ...

Orit Bashkin, New Babylonians: A History of Jews in Modern Iraq. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2012.
Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?
Orit Bashkin (OB): I became interested in the topic as a teenager, reading Hebrew novels written by Iraqi Jews who described their experiences in Iraq. When I was working on my first book I met Iraqi Jews who spoke to me about their experiences in Iraq, and Iraqi Muslims and Christians who spoke about their Jewish ...

Bio

Orit Bashkin is Associate Professor of Modern Middle East History at the University of Chicago. She is the author of The Other Iraq: Pluralism and Culture in Hashemite Iraq (Stanford, 2008) and New Babylonians: A History of Jews in Modern Iraq (Stanford, 2012).